Zenith

ICT4D Week 2018

Friday, July 13, 2018

Nigeria must multiply its efforts to strengthen the economy and
provide all the necessary social and physical infrastructure to keep up with
the country's explosive population growth, the Media Centre Against Child
Malnutrition (MeCAM) has said, reports ITRealms.

MeCAM is a media advocacy group against child malnutrition and determines
to strengthen the agro-nutrition capacity and interest of its members
professionally in contribution to nation-building, for emancipation from
extreme hunger especially in children, women and society, centred on Goal 2 of
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

MeCAM National Coordinator, Remmy Nweke said in a press statement
commemorating the World Population Day that Nigeria’s estimated 192m population
is not sustainable and may well worsen its security challenges and leave more
children malnourished, unless it is matched by commensurate economic growth and
infrastructure.

“Such infrastructure must include affordable and accessible
medical facilities that would not only boost public health but will offer all
the assistance for family planning to check unwanted pregnancy and keep
population in check as well as have healthy children,” according to the statement.

“Overpopulation begets insecurity especially on food and
put pressure on family fiscal economy, could lead to school dropouts, and lack
of money for balance diet which is key to effective breastfeeding by mothers.

“Importantly, MECAM urges the government to make life more
abundant for the people by working on all the fundamentals of the economy that
would support its population. Also, we call on the governments to double their
efforts on education, health care and access to other basic needs so that the
rising population would be an asset instead of liabilities and source of
security threats.”

Commemorated every July 11, the World Population Day was
established by the then-Governing Council of the United Nations Development
Programme in 1989, an outgrowth of the interest generated by the Day of Five
Billion, which was observed on 11 July 1987. The objective is to focus
attention on the urgency and importance of population issues. This year’s
commemoration was themed “Family Planning is a Human Right”.